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We
got woken about midnight last night. Matty had been coughing a
lot in his sleep, and must have woken himself up. He came into
our room crying “Mummy, mummy”. I wasn't at my best
at that stage and lay there, barely conscious, trying to ignore
him. Eventually he climbed into bed between us, coughing and fidgeting
and crying. A non-sleep deprived, rational and fully conscious
person would have recognised immediately that he wasn't feeling
well. Deb did. I didn't. I snapped at Deb and pretended to sleep,
hoping she would miraculously make it go away. Matthew got progressively
worse and I got more irritable.
Finally
he started spluttering, ready to vomit. I managed to get him out
to the kitchen where he started throwing up on the floor and a
little over me. Big thick chunks of mucousy vomit. We comforted
him and he eventually calmed down with sips of water and soft
words. I sat with him on the couch, watching a Scooby Dooby Do
cartoon at 1am, holding him on my lap, with my arms around him.
I persuaded him to turn off the tv and we went back to bed, all
of us in our bed. We tried giving him some Pamol as he had a fever.
A little while later he was ready to throw up again. I was standing
on the kitchen floor again, barefoot and naked except for the
new t-shirt I had put on a little earlier. He threw up all over
me. I almost threw up myself at the smell as it ran down my chest,
warm as it soaked through the cotton t-shirt against my skin.
We
changed him again. I changed again. I'm kinda hazy from here on
in. I tried sleeping with him in his bed for a while. So did Deb.
He threw up again over Deb. He had a fever — he kept talking
about water, he mentioned his gumboots, and once (almost bizarrely
except that the “Adventures of Blinky Bill” is one of
his favourite tv programmes) he said the single word, “Wombat”.
Finally, some time after 3am, we managed to get him to take some
Pamol and he fell asleep.
I
woke with the alarm at 6.15am but gave up trying to go to work.
Deb was feeling shattered and unsure if she could cope looking
after him, so I ended up only working for some of this afternoon.
Matthew slept till 10am this morning. He's a lot better. We're
still exhausted!
Exhaustion
is a constant skein running through our life right now. It just
seems impossible to get enough sleep. It just seems impossible
to get all the things done we have to do. Christmas, of course,
makes it worse. Because New Zealand basically shuts down over
Christmas and early January, everyone is rushing to get things
done before it's too late. Work is crazy. The shops are filled
with people, stressed from too much to do, exhausted from the
midsummer heat, all trying to frantically buy those Christmas
gifts they promised themselves they would much earlier this year
but never did.
We're
planning some big changes next year. It's just feeling out of
control right now with both me and Debbie working full-time and
trying to do other work as well. And Matty is noticing it as well.
Every day he cries before we drop him off at his caregivers. It's
not that he doesn't like it there — and once we are gone
he's happy — but, we think, it's that he wants to spend more
time with his parents. And his parents want to spend more time
with him.
Ah,
I feel like I'm dumping tonight here, and there's more I want
to write, but I'm too tired to form thoughts and sentences. It's
been a tough year. Lots of good things, yes, but at a price paid
for in lost hours of sleep.
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